


Asking

by chelseagirl



Category: The Hour
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 11:53:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1093587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chelseagirl/pseuds/chelseagirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lix and Randall have always had a difficult time asking.   Set during the Spanish Civil War, and again in London, after the events of 2.06.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Asking

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Specialcookies](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Specialcookies/gifts).



Spain. War and chaos everywhere.

She wasn’t quite sure what they were to each other, she and Randall, and she suspected he wasn’t sure either.

She’d known from an early age that she wasn’t the settling down type, and where she was right now, covering the civil war in Spain from the front lines, was exactly the kind of place, the kind of life, in which she was always bound to find herself. Attachments were necessarily fleeting. Lix Storm wasn’t much for worrying about the future. Later, there’d be time – or not.

They were lovers, occasionally. They were the best of friends and drinking companions, mostly. He could be hard to read, even for her, who knew him better than the rest did. Some of it, she knew, was his desperate need to hide his condition, the signs that she thought she could see but suspected others did not. If he kept his distance, nobody needed to know everything. Still, sometimes his symptoms were obvious; he’d nearly not made it out of a collapsing building once because he had a compulsion to touch every window frame in the room. A photographer who’d thought Randall was right behind him raced back in and pulled him out just in time. Only Lix knew the whole story, though, and only because she’d gotten him very drunk that night.

Various journalists and foreign volunteers came and went, alliances shifting as people drifted in and out of the group. Sharing their stories at the bar afterwards, that was the time when they all connected. He drank heavily back then, as did they all. Often, Lix was the only woman there, except for an American, Martha Gellhorn, the one who later married Hemingway. (That hadn’t lasted very long.)

On the evening in question, she’d just gotten back from the front. Randall was seated at the bar, on his own, a bottle of Scotland’s finest open in front of him. He’d made a considerable dent in it already. He signaled the bartender for another glass, and as he poured her a strong one, she could see his hand trembling.

“Rough one?” she asked. Not that she had to. They were all rough – you didn’t come here because it was easy. But there was something about his eyes, this time. Something he’d seen. You could always tell, even with Randall, so guarded in some ways, so straightforward in others. 

“Jimmy and I went along with a troop convoy. It was ambushed. Dozens of people slaughtered. And Jimmy . . . “ he trailed off, couldn’t speak.

“Is he?”

Randall didn’t answer, just took her hand in his for a moment. They sat there in silence, Lix unwilling to break in on his feelings until he chose to share them. Finally, he stood, shaky on his feet. Ordinarily, he held his liquor well. “I think I should . . . “ Now she could hear that he was slurring his words. He grabbed the bottle by its neck to take it with him.

For a moment, she remained on the bar stool, unsure if she was invited, uncertain if he was in any condition for companionship. It was his weaving gait that finally decided her – she wasn’t sure he’d make it back to his room on his own, in any case, and she didn’t much like the idea of stepping over him in the hallway in the morning.

By the time they got to his doorway, she was half supporting him. She took the key from him, opened the door, and maneuvered him inside. 

They’d spent the night together on occasion, always at her place. Now she understood why – the room looked almost as though nobody lived there. His notebooks were arranged in neat piles on the desk, exact distances apart. His clothes must have been all put away – there was no dressing gown left casually on a chair near the bed, no glass left on the table. While the lived-in feel of her space must have been distressing to him, she’d suspected more than once, what she saw now was that he’d not wanted her to see the exact precision with which he ordered his own room.

She helped him to the bed, and assisted him in pulling off his shoes. “N. . .not there,” he said, as she arranged them as tidily as she could by the bedside. “Inside the wardrobe.”

Each item was carefully disposed of, according to his instructions, before she was able to settle him down. He seemed almost absurdly grateful that she didn’t question anything; whether he thought she was humoring a drunken idée fixe, or whether he realized she’d begun to grasp the depths of what he was hiding, she wasn’t sure.

“I’ll check in on you in the morning,” she said, having gotten his permission to set a glass of water by the bedside – he was going to wake up dehydrated, she was certain – and taking the remains of the whiskey in payment.

But just as she reached the door, he said, softly, “Stay.”

And then there was no question of her leaving.

By the time she’d reached the bed, he was snoring, deep in whatever realm the whiskey had taken him to, so she slipped off her watch, took off her shoes, and lay down beside him, fully dressed and outside the covers, her head resting on his shoulder.

In the morning, she woke to find him stroking her hair, showing remarkably few signs of just how drunk he’d been the night before. When he saw that she was awake, he leaned over and kissed her, gently, on the lips, a kiss that intensified as she responded. In a moment, she had slipped out of her blouse and trousers (careful to place them neatly on a nearby chair) and was under the covers with him.

From then on, until things fell apart (a year later, had it been?), they were together every night.

* * *

London. The most shattering day of their lives.

Lix sat with Bel Rowley in the hospital waiting room, holding her hand and making comforting noises. Randall paced up and down the limited space; Lix knew him well enough to know that he was counting the number of steps from one end of the room to the other. 

“Bel, darling, we’ll stay with you until there’s some news.”

“Really, that’s not necessary.” Unable to ask for what she so clearly needed. It was like looking into a mirror, Lix thought, and didn’t move. Randall continued his pacing, calming himself but making everyone around him nervous.

Finally, though, a nurse emerged. Since Freddie didn’t have any living relatives, his producer would do, and Bel was admitted to the room. 

Randall took the seat next to her, but though near, sat stiffly apart. Lix heard him repeating something softly to himself, under his breath. She found herself wondering if that moment today, when finally, shattered at the news of Sophia’s death, he’d taken her hand, meant anything, or whether they were doomed to go through life like this, moving in tandem but at a distance. 

She was still wondering that some time later, when a door opened, there was an exclamation and footsteps. Bel practically threw herself around the older woman’s neck. “He’s conscious, oh, Lix, he’s going to be all right . . . that is, they don’t know the extent of the damage, but he’s awake, and he’s . . . he’s himself. He’s Freddie.”

“Wonderful news, sweetheart.”

“I’m going to stay,” Bel said. “But no need for you two to keep me company.”

After some further congratulations and reassurances, they left her there. Without quite knowing how it had happened, Lix found herself in a taxi, with Randall saying something to the driver about two stops. For the duration of the ride, he sat stiffly in his seat, looking straight ahead and nearly as far away from her as he could be. But as the taxi pulled up in front of her building, he asked, “Will you be all right?”

“Of course not,” she replied, in what she hoped was an offhand tone. The sort of thing she was normally a master of . . . “But I’ll manage. Goodnight.”

It actually took her a moment to realize that he’d paid the taxi and followed her to her door.

“I thought,” he said, and stopped cold. “I thought perhaps we could talk.”

“Too tired for that, darling,” she said, then realized she’d used the kind of casual endearment she used with others (with Bel, with Freddie), but never with him. “But I can give you a cup of tea.” 

Once inside (she would not let herself think about how the disarray of her flat would afflict him), she turned on the gas ring to make him tea. She poured herself a whiskey: just because he didn’t drink anymore didn’t mean that she was going to pretend anything. Returning to the living room with the drinks, she found he was sitting stiffly upright, still wearing his overcoat. 

“I’m sorry, Randall, really, I’m just too shattered to . . . “ she trailed off as she handed him the tea.

“You didn’t leave, when I asked you to.” And apparently he was returning the favor.

“I know. It’s not what you really needed. It’s not what I really needed.” And avoiding the matter yet another day, week, year – maybe that was not what she really needed, either.

“I make everyone leave, in the end. I know that. I thought . . . I thought if we could find her, maybe somehow it would make up for . . . “ His agitation was starting to show. 

“No,” she said. “We made the choices we made. If I’d kept her, she’d have been safe in England. I could have made it work somehow. I could have” . . . she blundered on ahead, "I could have given you the chance . . . "

“Maybe. A lot of people weren't safe in England during the Blitz.” And so much more he wasn't saying. Ironic, that two people so dedicated in their professional lives to telling the truth to the public should be so incapable of talking about anything personal. Or perhaps, not so ironic.

Lix sighed, and drained her glass. “We can tell ourselves whatever stories we want, but the fact is, we’ll never know. But all the pretty stories I'd imagined, of her growing up, becoming who she was meant to be . . . . ”

He nodded. In a moment he stood, and began to walk to the door. “Maybe you're right. Maybe we both already know everything there is to be said." He paused. "I’ll see you at the office.”

But there was one more thing, she realized, that had to be said between them. So this time she was the one who said it. “Stay.”

And then there was no question of his leaving.

**Author's Note:**

> For Specialcookies, who asked for Randall/Lix in the past, and perhaps Bel/Freddie, as well -- I'm afraid Freddie's offstage for the duration, but it's implied in the second scene. Thank you so much for the prompt; I'd been wanting to write these characters, and working on this has reminded me how very wonderful they are, and how much I want to play with them. Hope you enjoy! (Also, I'm so glad to have found one of your Lix/Randall fics in translation! I loved it.)


End file.
